Chapter 3: The Stranger

"And so it is when you solve for X and Y, respectively." The teacher extracted his attention from the blackboard surface he had scribbled the sample equations and focused it on the glazed over faces of his students sitting in their desks, "Is any of this making sense?"

A chorus of heads nodded in silent unison and Professor Chuang turned back to the chalkboard continuing on in his normal monotone voice the explanation of the simple algebra problem oversimplifying it to the lowest degree and boring the class further. Hotaru leaned her head on her hand. It was 1:30 and her stomach was grumbling, ready for lunch. Without thinking she let her eyelids droop until they were completely closed.

"Tomoe!" The monotone voice took on a shrill ascent as it trilled. "We're not boring you too much I hope?"

Her violet eyes shot open and she sprang up in her seat, "No sir! Not at all Chaung-sensei!"

The scrawny, ebony haired professor eyed her narrowly, but then closed his eyes and conceded in a stiff voice, " Good."

Hotaru let out a sigh of relief as she slumped back in her seat and the stuffed shirt professor turned back to his lecturing. She hadn't meant to do that, nod off, that is. True, her strange dreams had made getting any restful sleep whatsoever an impossibility for the past few days and staying awake during the day's classes drained what little energy she had on reserve. Hotaru squeezed her eyes shut. She just didn't understand why she had to have these dreams. She had never had nightmares like these before the past week. To be honest, she had to confess that her visions were on one level completely terrifying and on another entirely baffling, but she also had to admit that somehow, they felt familiar, as if it was only natural that she was a part of them now, playing witness to the violent and scary images that ran through them. But were they true? Were they happening somewhere? Would they come true someday? If then, when?

Out of the colors exploding on her closed lids in the darkness, a few disjointed shapes began to take on mushy human forms.

Oh no! It's happening again…

The remaining colors slowly materialized into the background of a burning city with three figures fighting against the backdrop…

There had been tranquility for too long in the Sol System. Earth had grown soft in the years since Serenity had become Queen again. The senshi had fallen in love and now had families, but a time of reckoning had fallen upon their peaceful lives. It was time to introduce a little bit of Chaos back into the world and this time it would be one the senshi would not be able to defeat.

Tokyo burned, people, civilian life had long ago become non-existent. Any and all surviving families had been put on shuttles for emergency evacuation to Earth's closest neighbors: Venus and the moon. Only one guardian remained on the dying planet fighting the new threat beneath a blood red sky.

Among the rubble Sailor Saturn, bloodied and bruised sat with her young companion, a boy with sandy blonde hair who could not have been older than eleven or twelve at the time, both hiding from the enemy who had decimated the city. He was just too strong! He'd killed everyone! Sailor Jupiter had been the first to fall and the first to die, her wife Mercury, had been the next to fall, faithfully at her side. Next came Mars and Venus and after they were out of the way, the monster set his sights upon the Outer senshi.
With a minimal amount of effort, he too had disposed of both Uranus and Neptune. King Endymion was missing and the Queen and their young daughter had been skirted away against their wishes to a secret hiding place where it was guaranteed they would be safe from harm.

The adult Saturn took a deep labored breath to steady her hectic breathing. Smoke rose through the air all around them, dark clouds against the scarlet sky effusing from the hungry fires smoldering in the sundered buildings all around them.

Saturn closed her eyes in an attempt to retrieve some internal calm. Her parents were dead, her mama, her papa and their children, her younger siblings were scatter Kami knows where all over the universe. The boy across from her was her only remaining connection to her parents and the rest of the senshi who had been butchered in defense of home and family. The young boy's angular face was smeared with blood from an open gash on his forehead and out of the visage of drying streaks of red and blood peered two cerulean blue eyes deep and timeless like the sea just as his mother's used to be before the monster closed them.

But who was this monster? Hotaru could not see him, had never seen him in all of her frightful visions, only felt the cold solemnity of his presence and the death it wrought everywhere it appeared.

Then there was that evil laugh, such a cynical, devious rumbling.

"Come out, come out where ever you are." The deep voice broke the silence and whatever internal calm Saturn may have retrieved for herself and what's worse it was filled to the brim with a sickening sense of humor.

Saturn's breathing evened. She wished her parents were here. They always knew what to do when times like this came up, all of the senshi did and if they didn't then they had worked it out as a group. She wouldn't let the anxiety building in her chest manifest itself at the sudden rush of memory. She had to be strong now. She was all that was left to protect the dying planet. If she didn't kill the monster now billions more would die, but at the same time, she knew she didn't have the strength anymore. She's been the last of her kind for a year now and all that time he'd been hunting her, fighting her and beating her for sport. It was just a game to him by now, her father's cursed creation. How could he! Saturn screwed her eyes shut! He may not have been himself under the control of the Death Busters, but who would even think to create a creature with that much destructive power inside him?

And what was worse, his cells came from them, most of the cells that gave him his power had been taken from the senshi and their predecessors the knights (transcending time and other dimensions was nothing to the Death Busters). Cells and abilities from some of the strongest people to ever live in the soul system had been incorporated into the monster's being and he had emerged from his secret lair fully formed and programmed to kill and rule with the mindsets of every ruthless conqueror ever to live.

Saturn had wrangled that information from the creature when he had wounded her almost to the point of being immobile. She had demanded to know who he was and where he came from and why he had killed the senshi and was intent on destroying the Earth. Believing that she would not live to tell the tale due to the extent of her injuries, he had told her of Dr. Tomoe and his secret laboratory, the one in the mountains where he hid this little project of his in which he had certain lower members of his Witches Five to travel between dimensions taking cells from the knights Entarais, Regelle, Sinis, Orion, Alexandria, Lucretia, and Anna as well as from the senshi from the past and also from the monstrous creatures who used to fight on behalf of the Dark Kingdom to absorb their ruthlessness.

However, the majority of the monster's strength was due to both additions senshi and the DNA of the legendary figures of the Silver millennium as well in part to various alien genetic configurations which were adapted from the most successful strains of Dr. Tomoe's strongest daemons. Just add human intellect and cunning with a generous helping of the past history of the Sol system and Earth had its prime destroyer.

Saturn shut her eyes. If only they had been able to see this coming years ago they could have stopped it before half of the population of Earth had to lose their lives, her parents and loved ones included. Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune….they were all gone! Every since that monster had been unleashed he had played with and terminated every life he had come across. There was no stopping him. Saturn knew better than to think she was strong enough to put a stop to all of this, in the back of her mind she knew better, but what would be gained from running away from this? There were still lives to be saved. Most of the refugees most recently discharged from Earth had been evacuated to the Moon as a failsafe, but they needed time to be transferred to the other inner planets where the threat this monster posed was lessened somewhat by time and distance. The Earth was already in the throes of death. If and when it blew up, half of the moon would be taken out in the explosion as Serenity's power could only protect so much to where the monster had limited and those people needed, no deserved time to be saved.

Damn it!

The voice came again, this time with an undertone of deadly boredom. "Saturn, I am quickly tiring of this game. Come out, come out where ever you are." Then there was a low pitched laugh. "I promise if you turn yourself in now I will make your death quick and painless, not like the others, not like Neptune and Uranus."

Saturn stiffened as her eyes shot open, the monster's last few words striking a nerve within her, though a little voice in the back of her consciousness warned her that that was the point. He wanted her to come out. He took amusement in playing with life and he would prolong the satisfaction of drawing out hers for as long as he could and then there was the matter of the boy. Her violet eyes focused on the blonde haired boy crouching across from her in the semi darkness that was hiding them from their fates from now. He was her parent's eldest son and the only one who remained on Earth. She didn't know where the rest of her siblings were nor what had happened to any of the children of the senshi. They had all vanished after their parents' deaths, but this boy was the last here. He had fought alongside her since the last of them had fallen and he was not about to leave her, but she could not risk his life.

For as young as he was, he was ten times stronger both in power level and in skill than she had been at his age. She could already see that he would be important in the years to come, if Crystal Tokyo was ever going to have a chance again. He had to survive, they all had to.

A sudden explosion near them bathed their hiding place in yellow-orange light and Saturn shrunk back. No! He couldn't be. Her thoughts raced and reeled as she came to the realization of what he was doing. The monster was blowing up every nook and cranny left in the city that looked as though it could offer refuge to any one still hiding in the city in an effort to flush them from their hiding place. A blast golden of energy narrowly missed their corner and hit the base of what was once a skyscraper and the entire substructure went up in a blaze of smoke and flames.

"Come out I say!" The deep voice was enraged now and nearby they could hear another building succumb to one of his attacks.

"Hotaru-sama…"

Her time had come. She picked up her staff and moved closer to the wall.

"Don't move, Nicholas, stay here." She whispered to the boy who was now looking at her with an expression of horror on her face.

"No, if you're going to go out there I want to come with you."

Nicholas stood up to follow her, but she pulled him back down roughly into relative safety so that his face was again shaded by the darkness. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, she smacked him back into the concrete behind him and he slide wordlessly to the ground as unconsciousness claimed him.

She bent over him then, stroking his check softly where a small line of blood had collected from where his temple had connected with the wall.

"I'm sorry, Nicholas." Saturn whispered to him, the honest regret wavering in her voice. "but you can't die here, of that much I'm certain." She was silent as another went off in the background, then she continued, her tone wistful. "It's my turn, little brother. When you wake up, leave this dying planet and never look back. The future is elsewhere. That's all the consolation I can give you. Please know that your parents and I and the rest of the senshi will always be with all of you, guiding you, the children of the senshi to build everything up again. You're our only hope, all of you. You must survive."

With that Saturn stood to her full height, picking her glaive up with her and with a deep breath emerged out of her hiding place…

"Ms. Tomoe!" The professor's stern voice shocked Hotaru out of her thoughts. "The equations flashing in your mind are far more interesting than the ones on the board I take it."

Hotaru bolted upright, eyes wide and she was quite surprised to find that the entire class including her instructor was now staring at her.

"No, sensei, I was just thinking." Hotaru argued weakly, the emotional strain in her voice evident.

Hotaru thought quickly, "Sir, may I be excused from class, I'm not feeling very well."

On any other count, the math teacher would have been suspicious, but the exhaustion displaying itself in the raccoon-like dark circles beneath the girl's eyes stayed his natural criticism.

"Very well then," He conceded, his eyes unconsciously narrowing as she stood and gathered her books. "But I expect your coursework from the afternoon to be on my desk first thing tomorrow morning."

"Yes sensei."

Hotaru bowed quickly and scuttled out of the classroom as fast as her shaking legs could take her.

-----

Hotaru had run out into the school courtyard expecting to find solace from her waking nightmare, but what she had run into was nothing close to the peace she had been hoping for. What she had found instead was a complete stranger, the perfect one in fact, lingering in the school yard. She was sitting on a bench across from her in the shadow offered by one of the few trees in the courtyard. A smooth cooling breeze stirred everything around them and though Hotaru was often weary of such strangers as she had been taught to be, there was an air of peace about this one which seemed somehow familiar. Though the figure's intricate features were shaded away from view, Hotaru had an inkling that whoever it was had to be a woman, somehow, she just knew without having to see.

A small sparrow landed on the bench beside the figure, normally closer than for comfort than was capable between most modern humans and wild animals, but there was something about her that left nothing to be feared or desired. As Hotaru was about to take a step closer, she felt a reticent feeling of déjà vu settle over her. She had done this before, or should have.

"Who are you?" she called out softly.

The quiet question was met with a calm, but lighthearted chuckle. "You mean you cannot tell me from the rest already? Your own sister, little star you called me then, if I remember correctly, but that was a long time ago." The voice was quiet for a while, and then spoke again, just as light and welcoming. "Well, I suppose you would have no way of knowing, after all, it hasn't happened yet, now has it?"

Hotaru swallowed loudly. With every moment she was growing more and more confused with this situation. She wanted to speak, to ask more questions, but every time she opened her mouth only silence followed. Though the figure's presence was not at all threatening, not being able to see her face made Hotaru increasingly uneasy.

As if she had spoken the request out loud, the figure all of the sudden sprang out of the shadows and into the open and with her first glimpse of her face, Hotaru gasped.

To be Continued…